This was recently posted on reddit/exmormon

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/dok1o3/id_like_to_bear_my_testimony_one_last_time/

I am sharing this with the RfM audience with the OP's permission, stated as follows:

"Yes, please feel free to share. I’m not worried about getting credit, it feels good just to send this pyre out to burn."


==== I’d like to bear my testimony one last time ====

Dear Mormon Church,

I’m angry at you, at the institution, at your tradition of female abuse and subjugation. I let you determine my life, my path, my worth, my value, my strengths and weaknesses. I let you devalue my humanity. I let you hurt my children. I’m angry.

I’ve stayed quiet for 46 years but no more. I’ve smiled, I’ve shrugged my shoulders, I’ve made excuses, I’ve bowed my head and closed my eyes for too long and I cannot anymore. I sat on my pew every Sunday with the men presiding over me dictating my every thought and action as a woman. The clothes we wear the movies we watch the volume of our laughter. We shush the children we have born because of duty as you sleepily preside over us.

You sit in the young women classes I teach listening, watching, making sure I am not leading them astray. I have played by the rules, all of them all my life. I sat while you asked me about my sex life, berated me for masterbating, not wearing the correct underwear, garments, while at the gym.

I’ve sat there being judged by a standard that I didn’t chose and that no one could ever possibly live up to and I’m angry.

I sat outside the closed door while you sat alone with my scared 14yr old daughter asking about the underwear she was wearing during her sexual assault, asking her if she orgasmed?! She didn’t even know the definition of the word. I’m angry!

I’ve taught hundreds of young women over the years that their sexual purity was their MOST prized possession. Not their intellect or their sense of humor, their PURITY. So ask me what happened to all those girls who “sinned” sexually? What happened to their sense of self-worth, now that they are damaged goods. Remember you can pull the nail out of the wood but there will always be a hole! Remember that example? Yeah, I’m angry!

What have I learned from being raised in this tradition you ask? My shoulders and knees are too provocative to be exposed. My human female body is inappropriate. Sex is not a natural expression of mutual attraction but a sacred act ONLY to be experienced with one person after marriage. My most important role is that of wife and mother, I have babies assigned to me waiting in heaven and if I don’t have them they will go to another family that may not be a safe loving family like mine. My role is to have babies and raise them to grow up and have more babies.

We women are given cursory roles to placate us but we don’t have any power. The men hold the priesthood and all the power. We all know we are here to keep a nice home, make delicious meals, be as modestly attractive as possible, raise happy healthy children who obey all of the commandments. That is the standard, I’m angry.

I am more than a vagina, my internal organs don’t dictate the rules you’ve determined for me, my daughters and all the millions of women under your control. Yes I said it, control, what else can you call it? That’s what it is isn’t it? It’s emotional control, it’s Psychological control, it’s mental control and yes, physical control.

I’ve sat 4 times while my husband and all the men of his choosing gather around the newly born child that I carried for 9 months and pushed into this world, circling around with hands on shoulders to proclaim a blessing while women sit, heads bowed, scratching the words a man speaks like it’s a Prophecy worthy of canonization. Then he hoists the baby overhead like a prize and the congregation all collectively sigh in admiration. What if I wanted that moment, what if I was inspired to proclaim this blessing? No, not possible, my vagina dictates otherwise. I’m angry!

I lived a life that was a lie. It turns out all these rules were just made up and ripped off from other religions or movements. It’s strange finding out that that rock solid foundation that forced you to overlook all those red flags your whole life, is literally just lies. It’s not a foundation at all but a janky multilevel corporation with a gross sexual deviant founder at its core.

That beautiful miracle of God appearing to Joseph Smith never happened. And the church, who dictates your every move, knows full well the truth and has waged a campaign of deceit for 200 years to keep those lies covered up. I’m angry.

I want a do over! I want to be 8 again and NOT feel like a piece of shit for sinning after my baptismal clean slate. I want to choose a career based on my desires and strengths! I want to date and have sex and fall in love naturally over and over until one day it’s the right person. I want a wedding where I don’t take off all my clothes and have someone wipe oil over my naked breasts, bare stomach and thighs. I want to decide for myself when and if I want to have a family. I want to raise my children to be healthy normal humans without guilt and pressure and evil and Satan. I’m angry!

I want to wake up and find out it was just a very elaborate dream and I get to start again and this time I’m free!

Guess what, Mormon Church? I have broken those creepy bonds you’ve held me down with all my life and I’m doing my damndest to erase the damage you’ve caused me and my family. I’m teaching them there is a different way, that they don’t have to be afraid, ashamed, that they can have everything I was denied and they can live free.

I may not be able to turn back the hands of time but I won’t sit down, I won’t shut up. I will take back my power I never knew I had and I will scream and shout and yes I will allow this anger to take hold of this wheel and steer this life forward and this time I will aim for the stars, because I am free!!!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2019 09:20PM by beyondashadow.

Wow! Thanks for posting this. I was never a good-enough Mormon girl/woman to believe all of this, and fortunately got out of the church before this huge amount of damage was done to me.

Still, decades after I left the church I still struggle with nonsense I learned as a teenager and young wife, and still wonder what I might have accomplished if I hadn't spent so many years bogged down with church nonsense. Although I rejected a lot of it, and blamed the entire culture, I do realize how much I was damaged by it.

Take hold of your anger, all of you women, and hurl it back at those who wounded, weakened, and demoralized you.

Without you, the church is nothing.

flaunted by the Q15. I that this thread gets passed around the Internet for thousands to benefit from. Thanks for transferring this from the other exmo forum!

While they were telling girls like her 14-year-old daughter who had been sexually assaulted that they were damaged goods and asking horrible questions as though it were her fault, they told me it was my job to save my gay boyfriend by getting him turned on and doing everything up to, but not intercourse, and they'd give me a TR after I had carefully saved myself and I was 25. They can't have it both ways. It was more important that I sacrifice myself so they could save a man. I balked. The bishop kept telling me this is how we had to do it. We finally married to get them out of our lives and I only had 1 more interview with a bishop after that.

I did take my life back and I've made a pretty good life from the damage they caused, but we all bear the scars and my children will all their lives.

I never thought about the fact that here we carried our babies (twins for me with a C-section and no matter how thin I've been since, my body is stretched in every direction and will never be the same--try that one men) for 9 months and then the men get up and act as though they did the job. Like usual. I didn't want to give my babies blessings in front of an audience though. I thought it was all ridiculous. I was just going through the motions at that point where the church was concerned. And I'm someone who doesn't like to do anything that has an audience. But it really is ridiculous that the men bless the babies and then hold them up when the women did ALL the work.

Two very good posts tonight. This one and the one about the MIL and PBs.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2019 03:48AM by cl2.

This is a very good post. To be fair, I believe that the church is oppressive to both women and men, just in different ways.

I believe the church is really more complicated than men making the rules for women to follow. Sure, the men make the rules, but it uses women to enforce its rules and standards on other women. The church is successful in its oppression of women because women participate in it and for the most part allow it.

Every "licked cupcake" or modesty lesson I ever had was given by a woman. I had YW callings and gave a few of those lessons myself. The last time my daughter attended church several years ago, a woman approached her and told her that her skirt was too short.

I'm reminded of when Kate Kelly was facing excommunication for wanting a little equality in the church. The Mormon men around me mostly stayed silent about it, but the LDS women I know were very vocal about it, shaking their heads and saying that Kate should be ashamed of herself. I'm sure this was just what the church was hoping for.

When I decided to leave the church, I did so partly because my eyes were opened to its misogynistic ways. But at the same time, I saw how the church had used me, a woman, to hurt other women and promote its misogyny. Honestly, that angered me more than the inequality in the church

Excellent comments!

I will add that the Church also uses the women to maintain control of the men.

How often have we heard stories of women tattling to the Bishop when their eternal companion steps out of line?

The Church is a Spiritually Toxic Wasteland .... pure and simple.

The ONLY people who benefit are The Brethren and their nepotistic crony parasites ... making a nice living sucking the Life Energy from their clueless marks.

It depends on your personality. And women have a lot of power in the church. Just depends on their personality also.

I'm glad you brought the point up about men. My brothers are introverts and they didn't belong in the church. I used to feel bad for the deacons having to pass the sacrament or the ones who have to go collect fast offerings. I'd HATE that. Men who don't play the game are treated poorly.

BRAVO! Should be the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune. Arrow straight to the bullseye.


I can't believe women are still taking it after all these years. Like the ones in my family.

You intentionally let the cult hurt your children and did nothing about it? Holy shit! You seriously are warped and should be brought up on child abuse charges. I hope your own kids come after you for this "abuse". No one made you have children. No one made you make them go to a cult. No one made them get abused except you. Stop being a victim and take responsibility for you own life.

I think you misuse the word "intentionally" in this context.

Brainwash is a disability. If you have been victimized by unscrupulous parasites who took control of your life and your thoughts ... because they are evil geniuses adept at the use of UNDUE INFLUENCE to gain control over you ... especially if it started before you were even born ... with your clueless mother sitting in sacrament meeting holding your gestating existence captive in her womb ...

How do you spell d.e.f.e.n.s.e.l.e.s.s.?

Please cut the OP some slack. Human beings don't know what they don't know ... until they somehow start to get a clue. From that point, it usually gets very complicated on what to do with your new realization that your entire belief system foundation is a colossal fraud, and highly toxic to you and everyone you care about.

The OP woke up and got out and saved her children from being further consumed and exploited by The Brethren. Then she wrote about her experience with rare eloquence.

Please consider showing appreciation instead of unfairly excoriating her.

People do not know that they've been oppressed until something happens to shake them out of the way things have always been done. You accept things as normal until they are not.

+1

That was very bravely written.

I was also raised in a misogynistic church (the Roman Catholic church.) One of the most transformative moments of my life was walking into an Episcopal Cathedral (St. John the Divine in NYC) and seeing a woman in priestly garb standing just before the altar, welcoming people and directing them to seats. For the first time in my life, I saw myself reflected in a religious leader. Until then, I had no idea that I had been doing without. And I did go without. Sometimes you have no idea what you have been missing until you finally get it.

The simple truth is, you do not feel like a full human being until someone just like you (female, black, Latino, gay, etc.) is in a leadership position. Not a "woman's position" like a Relief Society President. But the same position that they big guys get.

Women are second-class citizens within the Mormon church. There is no way around that simple fact.

THIS!

I was molested. I am a male. I know what you are going through. I just choose not to dwell on it much.

My own childhood bishops did not ask sexual questions in their interviews, other than, "Are you morally clean?" or something like that, and I knew that I didn't mess around with boys, so I didn't think much about that question.

My own children and I moved to Utah, and the interviews were different, I suppose. My children pleaded with me to not make them have an interview, and I excused them from those. I thought only that it was very AWKWARD for each of my children to be alone with a deliberately intimidating man-behind-a-desk-of-authority, locked in a small office. Other than that, I had no clue.

My children were physically abused by Mormon leaders. In each case, the kids were threatened not to tell! My little ones took those threats seriously, from "burning in the second coming" to having the other kids hate my child, when all the sleep-overs were to be cancelled and my child would get all the blame for that.

I had to dig it out of my children, asking them why they hated church so much, and, together, they all FINALLY told me what had happened to them (and what was continuing to happen to other kids in the ward). That was the quickest gut-reaction snap-decision of my life! And one of the best decisions! I still believed in my BIC religion, but the words were final before they even came out of my mouth. I said, "You never have to go to that church again!"

Evil is evil, and it's sometimes that simple.

That was years ago, and my children are doing very well--but I can never apologize enough to them, and never stop feeling guilty, for trying to force them to go along with an evil cult.

Sigh...it's true that guilt goes along with being a mother...but this is way beyond guilt.

Thank you, beyondashodow, for your post. Brave woman. ExMormons are all brave.